NASA and Nissan aim for autonomous demonstration

Nissan North America and NASA Ames Research Center are extending their collaboration to research and develop autonomous mobility services. The update defines the programme’s activities into 2019, to include a working demonstration in Silicon Valley.

One fruit of the companies’ collaboration, revealed in January 2017, is Nissan Seamless Autonomous Mobility (SAM), a platform for managing autonomous vehicle fleets. The technology will now be developed and tested to manage autonomous transport services, ahead of public implementations.

“We built SAM from technology NASA developed for managing interplanetary rovers as they move around unpredictable landscapes,” said Maarten Sierhuis, director of the Nissan Research Center in Silicon Valley. “Our goal is to deploy SAM to help third-party organisations safely integrate a fleet of autonomous vehicles in unpredictable urban environments, for example ride-hailing services, public transport or logistics and delivery services. The final stage of our existing research agreement with NASA will bring us closer to that goal and test SAM in a working demonstration on public streets.”